Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a group of public school history teachers in the posh Boston suburb of Newton pledged to reject the “call for objectivity” in the classroom, bully conservative students for their beliefs, and serve as “liberal propagandist[s]” for the cause of social justice.

This informal pact was made in an exchange of emails among history teachers at Newton North High School, part of a very rich but academically mediocre public school district with an annual budget of $200 million, a median home price of almost half a million, and a median household income of more than $120,000. Read the entire email exchange here.

I obtained the emails under a Massachusetts public records law after one of those teachers arranged, earlier this year, for an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel organization to show Palestinian propaganda films at Newton North. This stunt earned the Newton Public Schools district a rebuke from the New England branch of the Anti-Defamation League and from Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council. But, as the teachers’ emails reveal, Jew-hatred is not the only specter haunting the history department at Newton North.

The Teachers Conspire to Hide Extreme Prejudice

It was late on a cold and snowy New England evening in February 2017, and Newton North history teacher Isongesit Ibokette was venting at his keyboard about the new guidelines for avoiding bias in teaching. They had been sent out by Newton North’s principal that morning, prompted by the general ill will among teachers for the new occupant of the White House.

The guidelines asked teachers to remain objective while teaching about historical and current events; and to treat all students, regardless of political opinion, with respect. Teachers were told: “For current controversial issues (health care, immigration, environmental policies, gun laws), teach students that there are different perspectives and present the reasoning of those who hold those different perspectives.”

Ibokette was having none of it. He typed this reply: “I am concerned that the call for ‘objectivity’ may just inadvertently become the most effective destructive weapon against social justice,” and sent it to the members of Newton North’s history department.

Ibokette was responding to an email from another Newton North history teacher, David Bedar. Bedar was same teacher who hosted the anti-Semites at Newton North, and has played a significant role in the years-long controversy over anti-Jewish bias in the public schools of the heavily Jewish suburb.

Earlier that February day, Bedar sent an email to fellow Newton North history faculty, accusing President Trump and his supporters of “nativism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.,” and objecting to the following “don’ts” that the Newton North principal had asked teachers to avoid:

“Assume that all students agree with us. . . .”

“Assume that all students feel comfortable disagreeing with us. . . .”

“Present facts or logic that support only one side of a current controversial issue. . . .”

“Present our own personal opinion on a current controversial issue as more right than another viewpoint. . . .”

These guidelines seem like Pedagogy 101, and are foundational to correctly applying logic and reason. Yet Bedar, who holds a master’s in teaching from the prestigious Duke University, admitted to his colleagues:

Personally, I’m finding it really difficult in the current climate to teach kids to appreciate other perspectives. . . [T]he ‘other viewpoint’ might not really be an argument ‘about which reasonable people can disagree’ and might not lead to any kind of intellectual, policy debate; it might just be blatantly racist. . . . [I]t feels wrong to not call out ideas that I know will offend many of my students and create a hostile and potentially unsafe environment. . . . I’m worried that as a school we’re so focused on making all kids feel safe and being PC that we’re not showing enough concern for [immigrant] students whose very rights to attend this school and receive an education are being seriously threatened. . . . I don’t feel good about protecting [a nativist] student’s right to a so‐called ‘political’ view. . . Do I really have to avoid saying ‘I think nativism is bad?[‘] The eugenics movement was based in large part on immigrants destroying our country.

Bedar’s strawman argument is fallacious. Trump administration immigration policies and the Americans who support them have nothing to do with eugenics. To claim without evidence and by tenuous association that they do is repugnant.

Don’t Fire Me for Being a ‘Liberal Propagandist’

Much worse yet is Bedar’s display of extreme political intolerance toward the views of millions of his fellow Americans, among whom are, presumably, a number of his own students. Support for immigration law enforcement is by no means a fringe political perspective, even in Massachusetts. It is certainly not some sort of taboo that must be expunged from classroom debate, and Newton North guidelines explicitly tell teachers to teach about the reasoning behind different perspectives on immigration.

Yet, in remarkable language, Bedar demanded that the school allow him to propagandize against it, and to do so without any professional consequences: “I have an obligation to teach civic duty and teach kids right and wrong, and about social justice. . . . This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t actually think we should have the option of not discussing [social justice] issues. I feel responsible for doing so. . . . We can help kids interpret the lessons of the past better than anybody. I feel like a phony when I’m not doing that. . . . But..this is hard. I don’t want to get fired for being a liberal propagandist” (emphasis added).

Bedar is, of course, wrong on multiple levels. A master’s degree in teaching is risibly inadequate to qualify anyone as the arbiter of right and wrong, and a history teacher’s basic obligation is to teach history accurately and objectively. A sine qua non of that obligation is to avoid propaganda of any kind.

Unfortunately, Bedar does not seem to be very good at the actual basics of teaching history, much less at interpreting the lessons of the past, shortcomings for which he compensates by being a reasonably good propagandist. For example, Bedar’s erroneous belief to the contrary notwithstanding, the early twentieth-century eugenics movement was based less in conservative nativism than in the same New England progressivism Bedar preaches today. The eugenicist Immigration Restriction League was founded in Boston by three Harvard progressives. As The Guardianwell puts it, eugenics is “the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left’s closet.”

Propagandists Simplify Very Complex Events into Slogans

Indeed, if common cause with the eugenics movement is Bedar’s litmus test for approved opinions in the classroom, then opinions supporting deficit spending and birth control should be as forbidden there as nativism seems to be. Left-wing economist John Maynard Keynes called eugenics “the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists,” and believed its implementation would “be a great moment in the progress of civilization.” Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was an inveterate eugenicist who believed that “the campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal, with the final aims of Eugenics.”

All of this is not to argue over birth control, deficit spending, and which ideologies are responsible for what travesties. Rather, it is to say that history, politics, and ideology are complicated things. Yet, in the history lessons they teach, propagandist teachers like Bedar insist on reducing all of this complexity to a Manichean struggle between “right and wrong,” the essence of which they insipidly correlate with “Democrat and Republican.”

In that kind of lurid light, where no shades of gray can possibly exist, people who lack the “right” politics must pose, in Ibokette’s words, a “real, immediate, and present danger” to human progress, and to all that is right and good. Men who light up the world in such stark contrast fill history books with their crimes.

This Is Like My Childhood Education in the Soviet Union

The year after the Soviet Union fell, I entered fifth grade at State School No. 8 in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where I was born at the beginning of the end of that evil empire. Usually, Soviet children started learning the history of Russia in fifth grade, but my teacher told the class that she had nothing to teach us anymore.

“The old history books are useless now,” I distinctly remember her telling us. “They were full of Communist Party lies.” Just like that, the entire monument of official Soviet history, built upon an ideological foundation of lies and held together by despotism, crashed as soon as the coercive power that had kept it upright for 74 years disappeared in an instant.

Left-wing activists are dug in at all stages of the American educational process from preschool to graduate school.

Undaunted by the failures of their comrades in the Soviet Union and other socialist hell-holes, left-wing activists are dug in at all stages of the American educational process from preschool to graduate school, where they seek to replicate the Soviet Union’s abuse of its children’s minds with lurid lies.

Even science education is facing a hostile takeover by progressive luddites with scientific degrees who insist, as one biology PhD student did recently, that “to think there are universal truths perpetuates a particular kind of able bodied white cisgender male logic.” The result of all this left-wing obscurantism is a brainwashed Generation Z that inhabits a false reality colored in stylized black and white by leftist dogma—the same false reality that Soviet school and preschool battered into me as a child.

The Teachers’ Administrators Back Them Up

After Bedar complained that he didn’t want to get fired for being a “liberal propagandist,” his fellow history teacher, Ibokette, wrote back: “David, if you get fired for doing exactly what history teachers, and indeed all rational and ethical‐minded adults should indeed be doing, I will be right behind you.”

I wish this would happen, not because I want them punished, but because I think the way they teach history is a form of child abuse. But Bedar and Ibokette’s superiors, all the way up the ladder, are fully on board with this abuse. Bedar’s direct supervisor, Newton North history department chair Jonathan Bassett, replied to his revolt against reason with this: “David: Your ‘essay’ is very good, and raises a lot of the questions that we are all dealing with. . . . We are in unprecedented times, and we are all struggling to do good.”

The Left is abusing American high school education in its struggle—not to do good, but to gain and retain political power. The ongoing trend of growing political intolerance and ideological bigotry among the newest American adults will continue, and nothing good will come of it. In the Soviet Union, I’ve seen what young people could be turned into, what I myself could be turned into. Trust me, America hasn’t seen anything yet.

Ilya Feoktistov is a member of the board of directors of Americans for Peace and Tolerance.

The Rolling Stones to play
For free in Cuba!
Watch and see;
They’ll film it and sell it—
Socialism, indeed!

Dylan will be next.
He’ll pull out his easel
And paint
The salty Cuban fisherman
And steely dock workers,
Then sell his paintings for
Thousands to adorn the walls
Of wealthy socialites.

Stalwarts of capitalism
Capitalizing on the
Lure of socialism.
Who are they fooling?

Capitalism eats its
Socialistic young
Who are lured by
The word, “free”—
Free love, free stuff,
Free college, free money.
“Free money?”
How does that work?

Free is the name of
A dinosaur rock group
And the name of a
Just as ancient song by The Who:
“I’m freeee!”

Not much is free, and
Who but The Stones
And Dylan
Understand it more—
They in their estates
On Montauk Island in New York,
Like Jagger,
And Malibu Beach in California,
Like Bobby Zimmerman,
With their secured walls
And protection from police.
Protection from what?

Capitalism sets them free
And eats its socialistic young,
Who wail for what
They don’t have
To be given to them—
No charge!

Capitalism Trumps socialism
In all its naïve glory.
“I was so much older then /
I’m younger than that now.”
One man’s ugly is
Another man’s fair maiden.

Socialism promises a halcyon land
And delivers caged hypocrisy,
Where everything rhymes with “free.”

So, which is the better,
As The Rolling Stones
Play for free
And Cubans dance in satisfaction
In their bloodied streets?

This category lists people who have, at one time or another, been active members of the socialist movement in the United States of America. It should not be taken for granted that inclusion in this category implies that figures necessarily were or continue(d) to be socialists.

Famous Socialists

A list of famous socialists. From utopian socialist thinkers to leaders of Communist states. Socialists generally believe in forming a society where resources are more equitably distributed. This often involves common ownership of the means of production. Within socialism there are different strands. The biggest divergence is between democratic socialists and the one-party Communist states of the Soviet Union and China.

Early Socialist Pioneers

Robert Owen (1870-1924) – Early socialist pioneer. His New Lanark factories were a model for giving workers better conditions. He also advocated a form of utopian Socialism and co-operative communities.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) – Karl Marx was the foremost Socialist intellectual. His work Das Capital forming the basis of Marxism. With Frederich Engels, he published ‘The Communist Manifesto’ – a radical agenda for Communist revolution.

Frederich Engles (1818-1883) – Engels was a great supporter and collaborator of Karl Marx. He helped write and publish the Communist Manifesto. His own work ‘Conditions of the working classes’ was a landmark study into the industrial proletariat.

Communist Leaders

V.Lenin (1870-1924) – Leader of Russian Revolution in 1917. He masterminded the Bolshevik revolution and became the first leader of the Soviet Union. Lenin began the policy of suppressing any opposition to Communist party rule.

Joseph Stalin (1878 – 1953) Successor to Lenin. Stalin ruthlessly strengthened his grip on power by eliminating any internal opposition and establishing his dictatorship.

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931 – ) Leader of the Communist party and Soviet Union. Gorbachev sought to reform the Soviet Union through Glasnost and Perestroika. Gorbachev stated he believed in the ideals of socialism.

Chairman Mao (1893 – 1976) – Leader of the Chinese Communist party and successful revolutionary. Mao established his own form of Communism, which included the devastating cultural revolution.

Fidel Castro (1926-) Cuban revolutionary leader. Castro led the Communist revolution of 1959, where he successfully ousted the US backed Fulgencio Batista.

Socialist revolutionaries

Che Guevara (1928 – 1967) A Latin American Marxist revolutionary. Guevara was a key figure in the Cuban revolution, but Guevara also wanted to ferment other revolutions in Africa and Latin America and criticised many aspects of the Soviet Union for betraying Marxist principles.

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) Marxist revolutionary. Trotsky was a key figure in the Russian revolution. He also advocated worldwide Marxist revolution. He was later assassinated on the orders of Stalin in Mexico.

British Socialists

Tony Benn (1925 – ). The son of a liberal politician, Benn became more left wing and committed to socialism as time went on. During the 70s and 80s he was the leading figure in the socialist wing of the British Labour party.

Aneurin Bevan(1897-1960). A firebrand socialist. The former miner and trade union leader, Bevan was a committed socialist and helped to implement the new National Health Service.

Clement Attlee. (1883-1867) British Prime Minister 1945-51. Attlee presided over one of the most radical Labour governments of the Twentieth Century. His government pushed through nationalisation and the creation of the welfare state.

Socialist Intellectuals

George Orwell (1903 – 1950) – English author who was leading advocate of democratic socialism. He fought in the Spanish civil war for Marxist group (POUM) on the Republican side. He criticised the totalitarian nature of Soviet Communism.

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) Revolutionised modern physics with his general theory of relativity. Supporter of socialism, wrote article – Why Socialism? published in 1949.

Helen Keller (1880-1968) – Keller became famous for being a leading advocate for the disabled. She was deaf-blind herself. She was also a lifelong supporter of the American socialist party and socialist causes.

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) A brilliant mathematician, pacifist and peace campaigner, Russell was also a believer in democratic socialism.

Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) – Spanish, modern ‘cubist’ painter. Picasso was a committed supporter of Communism throughout his life and remained an exile from his native Spain because of Franco’s fascism.

10 Awesome Movies with Libertarian Messages

October 8, 2014 – I was recently asked to choose some of my favorite films with libertarian messages. Below is a (by no means definitive) list of ten films that provides rich insight into the heart and soul of libertarianism. The criteria? Simply a film containing a libertarian lesson to be learned, whether intended by the filmmakers or not.

Office Space (1999).

Office Space acknowledges the desire of most Americans to be free from the often miserable drudgery of their working lives. Office Space offers a critique of corporate culture and trickle-down conformity, revolving around the emancipation-of-sorts of Peter, an office drone who leaves behind the things that crush his imagination and capacity for happiness. Added bonus: Office Space is especially cathartic for anyone who has ever wanted to take a ball-bat to an office printer. Though this violates the libertarian Nonaggression Axiom, it still represents a freedom of-sorts. Either way, as the mullet-sporting Lawrence might say: “F*ckin’-A.”

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

The reason for this inclusion is simple: equal freedom and justice for all — the heart, soul, and head of libertarianism.

Star Wars (1977).

A rag-tag group of “rebel” freedom-fighters voluntarily join together to fight the evil “empire” – The State. Good (freedom) versus evil (force — The State). Good wins. “The Force” is not force at all, but rather voluntary, cooperative action directed toward the ends of freedom, peace, and prosperity. “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” is right here, right now. Time to “restore freedom to the galaxy…”

Election (1999).

Director Alexander Payne’s dark comedy skewers American culture and politics. The story centers on a high school election for student body president, and touches on the soul-stifling conformity of compulsory education, bureaucracy, and suburbia. Mathew Broderick plays an uninspired and restless civics teacher overseeing the election, giving a wink to the possible decades-on fate of his once-youthful and innovative character Ferris Bueller. And Jessica Campbell’s Tammy summons a libertarian message, delivering an honest mockery of the proceedings to a packed gymnasium. She might as well be addressing the current political class in DC.

A Bug’s Life (1998).

This from Pixar, is a spin on Aesop’s Fable – The Ant and the Grasshopper. A Bug’s Life stands as a cautionary tale against the evils of socialism. The productive ants work hard all year, storing for winter. The grasshoppers produce nothing, then come to forcibly confiscate the fruits of the ants’ labor. Many Americans have increasingly learned to do likewise through the voting booth. Our politicians have been doing it far longer. Watch the clip. See the grasshoppers as the parasitic politicians, and the ants as the American taxpayers. This is what your politicians on both sides of the aisle truly think of you: “Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1, and if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life!”

Dr. Strangelove or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (1964).

Libertarian in that it illustrates the absurdity of men scheming to kill men. Stanley Kubrick at his best. A satire of power, the Cold War, the existential madness of the burgeoning military-industrial complex, and nuclear annihilation. America’s “leaders” ironically sum their own absurdity: “Gentleman, you can’t fight in here, this is the War Room.” Also, Slim Pickens rides a nuclear bomb like Seabiscuit.

V for Vendetta (2005).

This film, released in the midst of W’s military adventures and assaults on civil liberties, offers a blistering critique of The State. Under Obama, it’s urgency has grown. V is speaking directly to you, right here, right now: “…there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? …if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense…” It must be noted though, that the anarchic V’s acts of “terror” are not in accordance with the libertarian Nonaggression Axiom. And, many libertarians look far more favorably on secession and independence than revolution, which historically replaces tyranny with more tyranny.

The timeless wisdom of Clint Eastwood’s Josie Wales: “Governments don’t live together. People live together. Governments don’t give you a fair word or a fair fight. I’ve come here to give you either one. Or get either one from you… I’m saying that men can live together without butchering one another…”

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).

Considered by many to be the greatest anti-war film of all time, which makes it one of the greatest libertarian films of all time. Offers a sobering critique of warfare-state nationalism and institutionalized propaganda. The WW1 era teacher implores his students: “Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.” Lew Ayres’ Paul comes back from the front, confronting his former teacher with a heart-wrenching argument to the contrary.

What do you think of the libertarian merits of these 10 films? Feel free to comment and let me know what films I missed.

With the 45th anniversary of this 1970 book approaching in 2015, it would be good to review the book’s still-intact relevance. It remains today on my top-ten list of essential reads. The following is the third installment of my condensation of favorite sections and passages. –SB

THE STRATEGY OF SOCIAL FUTURISM: Can one live in a society that is out of control? That is the question posed for us by the concept of future shock. For that is the situation we find ourselves in. If it were technology alone that had broken loose, our problems would be serious enough. The deadly fact is, however, that many other social processes have also begun to run free, oscillating wildly, resisting our best efforts to guide them.

. . .

How can we prevent mass future shock, selectively adjusting the tempos of change, raising or lowering levels of stimulation, when governments—including those with the best intentions—seem unable even to point change in the right direction?

If random means a literal absence of pattern, he is, of course, overstating the case. But if random means that the outcomes of social policy have become erratic and hard to predict, he is right on target. Here, then, is the political meaning of future shock. For just as individual future shock results from an inability to keep pace with the rate of change, governments, too, suffer from a kind of collective future shock—a breakdown of their decisional processes.

With chilling clarity, Sir Geoffrey Vickers, the eminent British social scientist, has identified the issue: “The rate of change increases at an accelerating speed, without a corresponding acceleration in the rate at which further responses can be made; and this brings us nearer the threshold beyond which control is lost.”

THE DEATH OF TECHNOCRACY:

What we are witnessing is the beginning of the final breakup of industrialism and, with it, the collapse of technocratic planning. By technocratic planning, I do not mean only the centralized national planning that has, until recently, characterized the USSR, but also the less formal, more dispersed attempts at systematic change management that occur in all the high technology nations, regardless of their political persuasion. Michael Harrington, the socialist critic, arguing that we have rejected planning, has termed ours the “accidental century.” Yet, as Galbraith demonstrates, even within the context of a capitalist economy, the great corporations go to enormous lengths to rationalize production and distribution, to plan their future as best they can. Governments, too, are deep into the planning business. The Keynesian manipulation of post-war economics may be inadequate, but it is not a matter of accident. In France, Le Plan has become a regular feature of national life. In Sweden, Italy, Germany and Japan, governments actively intervene in the economic sector to protect certain industries, to capitalize others, and to accelerate growth. In the United States and Britain, even local governments come equipped with what are at least called planning departments.

First, technocratic planning, itself a product of industrialism, reflects the values of that fast-vanishing era. In both its capitalist and communist variants, industrialism was a system focused on the maximization of material welfare. Thus, for the technocrat, in Detroit as well as Kiev, economic advance is the primary aim; technology the primary tool. The fact that in one case the advance redounds to private advantage and in the other, theoretically, to the public good does not alter the core assumptions common to both. Technocratic planning is econocentric.

Second, technocratic planning reflects the time-bias of industrialism. Struggling to free itself from the stifling past-orientation of previous societies, industrialism focused heavily on the present. This meant, in practice, that its planning dealt with futures near at hand. The idea of a five-year plan struck the world as insanely futuristic when it was first put forward by the Soviets in the 1920’s. Even today, except in the most advanced organizations on both sides of the ideological curtain, one- or two-year forecasts are regarded as “long-range planning.” A handful of corporations and government agencies, as we shall see, have begun to concern themselves with horizons then, twenty, even fifty years in the future. The majority, however, remain blindly biased toward next Monday. Technocratic planning is short-range.

Third, reflecting the bureaucratic organization of industrialism, technocratic planning was premised on hierarchy. The world was divided into manager and worker, planner and plannee, with decisions made by one for the other. This system, adequate while change unfolds at an industrial tempo, breaks down as the pace reaches super-industrial speeds. The increasingly unstable environment demands more and more non-programmed decisions down below; the need for instant feedback blurs the distinction between line and staff; and hierarchy totters. Planners are too remote, too ignorant of local conditions, too slow in responding to change. As suspicion spreads that top-down controls are unworkable, plannees begin clamoring for the right to participate in the decision-making. Planners, however, resist. For like the bureaucratic system it mirrors, technocratic planning is essentially undemocratic.

The forces sweeping us toward super-industrialism can no longer be channeled by these bankrupt industrial-era methods. For a time they may continue to work in backward, slowly moving industries or communities. But their misapplication in advanced industries, in universities, in cities—wherever change is swift—cannot but intensify the instability, leading to wilder and wilder swings and lurches. Moreover, as the evidences of failure pile up, dangerous political, cultural and psychological currents are set loose.

One response to the loss of control, for example, is a revulsion against intelligence. Science first gave man a sense of mastery over his environment, and hence over the future. By making the future seem malleable, instead of immutable, it shattered the opiate religions that preached passivity and mysticism. Today, mounting evidence that society is out of control breeds disillusionment with science. In consequence, we witness a garish revival of mysticism. Suddenly astrology is the rage. Zen, yoga, séances, and witchcraft become popular pastimes. Cults form around the search for Dionysian experience, for non-verbal and supposedly non-linear communication. We are told it is more important to “feel” than to “think,” as though there were a contradiction between the two. Existentialist oracles join Catholic mystics, Jungian psychoanalysts, and Hindu gurus in exalting the mystical and emotional against the scientific and rational.

This reversion to pre-scientific attitudes is accompanied, not surprisingly, by a tremendous wave of nostalgia in the society. Antique furniture, posters from a bygone era, games based on remembrance of yesterday’s trivia, the revival of Art Nouveau, the spread of Edwardian styles, the rediscovery of such faded pop-cult celebrities as Humphrey Bogart or W. C. Fields, all mirror a psychological lust for the simpler, less turbulent past. Powerful fad machines spring into action to capitalize on this hunger. The nostalgia business becomes a booming industry.

The failure of technocratic planning and the consequent sense of lost control also feeds the philosophy of “now-ness.” Songs and advertisements hail the appearance of the “now generation,” and learned psychiatrists, discoursing on the presumed dangers of repression, warn us not to defer our gratifications. Acting out and a search of immediate payoff are encouraged. “We’re more oriented to the present,” says a teen-age girl to a reporter after the mammoth Woodstock rock music festival. “It’s like do what you want to do now. . . . If you stay anywhere very long you get into a planning thing. . . . So you just move on.” Spontaneity, the personal equivalent of social planlessness, is elevated into a cardinal psychological virtue.

All this has its political analog in the emergence of a strange coalition of right wingers and New Leftists in support of what can only be termed a “hang loose” approach to the future. Thus we hear increasing calls for anti-planning or non-planning, sometimes euphemized as “organic growth.” Among some radicals, this takes on an anarchist coloration. Not only is it regarded as unnecessary or unwise to make long-range plans for the future of the institution or society they wish to overturn, it is sometimes even regarded as poor taste to plan the next hour and a half of a meeting. Planlessness is glorified.

Arguing that planning imposes values on the future, the anti-planners overlook the fact that non-planning does so, too—often with far worse consequence. Angered by the narrow, econocentric character of technocratic planning, they condemn systems analysis, cost benefit accounting, and similar methods, ignoring the fact that, used differently, these very tools might be converted into powerful techniques for humanizing the future.

When critics charge that technocratic planning is anti-human, in the sense that it neglects social, cultural and psychological values in its headlong rush to maximize economic gain, they are usually right. When they charge that it is shortsighted and undemocratic, they are usually right. When they charge it is inept, they are usually right.

But when they plunge backward into irrationality, anti-scientific attitudes, a kind of sick nostalgia, and an exaltation of now-ness, they are not only wrong, but dangerous. Just as, in the main, their alternatives to industrialism call for a return to pre-industrial institutions, their alternative to technocracy is not post-, but pre-technocracy.

. . .

We need not a reversion to the irrationalisms of the past, not a passive acceptance of change, not despair or nihilism. We need, instead, a strong new strategy. For reasons that well become clear, I term this strategy “social futurism.” I am convinced that, armed with this strategy, we can arrive at a new level of competence in the management of change. We can invent a form of planning more humane, more far-sighted, and more democratic than any so far in use. In short, we can transcend technocracy.

. . .

ANTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY:

. . .

By now the accelerative thrust triggered by man has become the key to the entire evolutionary process on the planet. The rate and direction of the evolution of other species, their very survival, depends upon decisions made by man. Yet there is nothing inherent in the evolutionary process to guarantee man’s own survival.

Throughout the past, as successive stages of social evolution unfolded, man’s awareness followed rather than preceded the event. Because change was slow, he could adapt unconsciously, “organically.” Today unconscious adaptation is no longer adequate faced with the power to alter the gene, to create new species, to populate the planets or depopulate the earth, man must now assume conscious control of evolution itself. Avoiding future shock as he rides the waves of change, he must master evolution, shaping tomorrow to human need. Instead of rising in revolt against it, he must, from this historic moment on, anticipate and design the future.

This, then, is the ultimate objective of social futurism, not merely the transcendence of technocracy and the substitution of more humane, more far-sighted, more democratic planning, but the subjection of the process of evolution itself to conscious human guidance. For this is the supreme instant, the turning point in history at which man either vanquishes the processes of change or vanishes, at which, from being the unconscious puppet of evolution he becomes either its victim or its master.

A challenge of such proportions demands of us a dramatically new, a more deeply rational response toward change. This book has had change as its protagonist—first as potential villain and then, it would seem, as potential hero. In calling for the moderation and regulation of change, it has called for additional revolutionary changes. This is less paradoxical than it appears. Change is essential to man, as essential now in our 800th lifetime as it was in our first. Change is life itself. But change rampant, change unguided and unrestrained, accelerated change overwhelming not only man’s physical defenses but his decisional processes—such change is the enemy of life.

Our first and most pressing need, therefore, before we can begin to gently guide our evolutionary destiny, before we can build a humane future, is to halt the runaway acceleration that is subjecting multitudes to the threat of future shock while, at the very same moment, intensifying all the problems they must deal with—war, ecological incursions, racism, the obscene contrast between rich and poor, the revolt of the young, and the rise of a potentially deadly mass irrationalism.

There is no facile way to treat this wild growth, this cancer in history. There is no magic medicine, either, for curing the unprecedented disease it bears in its rushing wake: future shock. I have suggested palliatives for the change-pressed individual and more radically curative procedures for the society—new social services, a future-facing education system, new ways to regulate technology, and a strategy for capturing control of change. Other ways must also be found. Yet the basic thrust of this book is diagnosis. For diagnosis precedes cure, and we cannot begin to help ourselves until we become sensitively conscious of the problem.

These pages will have served their purpose if, in some measure, they help create the consciousness needed for man to undertake the control of change, the guidance of his evolution. For, by making imaginative use of change to channel change, we can not only spare ourselves the trauma of future shock, we can reach out and humanize distant tomorrows.

18 April 1990, DENVER, COLORADO: “Painfully will you get your food from it [the soil] as long as you live. . . . By the sweat of your face will you earn your food, until you return to the ground, . . . So Yahweh God expelled him [Adam] from the garden of Eden, to till the soil. . . .” From those preceding words from Genesis 3: 17-19 (NJB), many people find the root cause of the “W” word—WORK! From that instance of man’s fall from grace and expulsion from Eden to the present day, few would disagree that work has remained essential to the survival of human life.

Work brings the reward of life yet causes pain and frustration in the process, as the Genesis text has shown, and as the Roman poet Lucretius (c. 98-95 B.C.) has further illustrated in the following passage from Book Five of his philosophical poem, On The Nature of Things:

“Unless by turning up the fruitful clods with the share and labouring the soil of the earth we stimulate things to rise, they could not spontaneously come up into the clear air; and even then . . . when things earned with great toil . . . are all in blossom, either the ethereal sun burns them up with excessive heats or . . . the blasts of the winds waste them by a furious hurricane.”

As if it was not excruciating enough to have to labor for existence, a most unfortunate event occurred along the path of civilization to cause labor to become truly torturous. This sad moment in time was illumined by Swiss music teacher and political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his On the Origin of Inequality (1755). He wrote:

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, . . . and crying . . . the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”

For the approaching twentieth anniversary of Earth Day, on April 22, 1990, there are, perhaps, no words more ripe than the final fifteen words of the preceding passage by Rousseau.

The birth of the idea of ownership, specifically the owning of land, led to the idea of having others work the land for the owner. This required motivation for others to do the work, which led to slavery (the owning of the workers themselves), which led, ultimately, to a more subtle form of slavery—wage labor.

Today, the owners of the earth are the corporate directors. One of the largest corporations is Time Warner, Inc., which in June of 1989 had a work force of 35,460 employees (The Nation, June 12, 1989). The motivation to labor for these owners is to earn wages with which to buy the fundamental necessities of human survival (blue jeans; mesquite-barbecued fajitas; a Victorian townhome; a Volkswagen; insurance coverage for one’s car, home and life; and so on).

As a further motivation, it is possible to earn beyond one’s needs of survival to one’s wants of comfort, such as a movie (Batman), a magazine (Batman), music (Prince: the Batman soundtrack) or television (Unsolved Mysteries)–all the enjoyable additions to life that just happen to be owned by Time Warner, Inc. or its corporate siblings.

Ownership today has moved far beyond Rousseau’s “piece of ground” to the entire earth, the people of the earth and all that the people of the earth consume—mentally, digestively, and physically. The instrument of ownership today is the system of wage labor, in which people labor to own the right to exist and to experience comfort beyond existence.

The historical progression of labor into wage labor, as the result of the idea of ownership, is also a progression from the simple effects of labor (pain and frustration) into more complex effects of wage labor (torture, anguish and despair). These hellish fruits of wage labor are presently found from the bottom to the top of the work force.

At the lower depths, people struggle simply to exist. Their torture is a fear of the icy gray-tinged human skin that precedes the relief of their death.

Those in the middle struggle to prosper. Their anguish is a fear of the cramps that accompany a shrinking stomach.

At the top, people struggle to tighten the grip on their prosperity. Their despair is twofold: they fear the fall from the “financial high wire” to the abyss of poverty, and they fear the confinement of a prison cell that comes if their methods of reaching the top are deemed foul.

Within the system of wage labor, fear is the prime motivator that causes all laborers to struggle and to suffer the travail of contemplating a possible drop in earnings.

Two effects that branch from this fear of being without income are escape and compromise. On the lower end, some escape into the extreme of crack addiction and some into alcoholism; others escape through suicide. Some compromise their sense of dignity and value by deviating their creative talents in order to pursue the wages necessary for survival and comfort. They compromise through prostitution or by marketing drugs; some even compromise by marketing children.

In the middle, people escape to the endless fantasy worlds found in the movie theatre; they escape to the mall to spend money on a new book or a CD that should be spent for an overdue credit card bill (providing the illusive relief of being prosperously free); they escape to the beguiling freshness of life found in an extra-marital affair, or a divorce. They compromise by cheating on their income taxes, and by lying to their employers by calling in “sick”when they really wanted a day just to kick back and relax.

People at the top are like Donald Trump; they escape to Aspen, Colorado and compromise by giving donations to charity. Their fur coats give them all the warmth necessary to keep them as distant as possible from the icy gray-tinged skin that precedes death.

There are tortures born from the system of wage labor that are of a more personal nature. Nine years ago, my wife and I both worked for oil companies. Our wages soared to new heights. As our income rose, our lifestyle followed suit. We purchased a house in the spring of 1983.

At first, it was simply a piece of ground with a hole dug for the basement. We watched the concrete foundation as it was poured, the wooden framework as it was assembled and the panels of dry wall as they were set into place. We chose the carpeting, the floor tiles and the oak cabinets. We took pictures at least once a week for a before-and-after album. We watched the fence go up.

Then, in 1985, my wife lost her job with Petro-Lewis when they laid off all but a handful of employees. In 1986, I lost my job with Atlantic Richfield Company when they closed their Denver office. As our income from the oil companies evaporated before our eyes, we struggled to replace it with income from other jobs. My wife worked as a daycare provider for infants and toddlers, and I worked as a temporary draftsman for less than half of my oil company salary. As a result of the drastic loss of wages, we eventually filed bankruptcy and lost the house to foreclosure. My wife wept as we drove away from the house and moved into a smaller townhome. I held my tears inside along with the feeling of wanting to put my clenched fist through the nearest plastered wall.

Now, I work eight hours a day (still for less than my oil company salary); I attend night school in order to finish my degree and to push towards a career change; and I spend, with my wife, the little time that is left.

In his treatise of 1762, The Social Contract, Rousseau wrote, “Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.” Today, Rousseau’s words are more valid than ever in our own country that is known ironically as the land of the free.

In the system of wage labor, true freedom does not exist. In its place, there is only the fear that fuels the struggle for earnings, the escape into transient illusions of freedom, and the compromise of human dignity and value for the required dollars that buy what is, in fact, our most fundamental human right—a comfortable existence.

I originally wrote this April 18, 1990. After twenty-three years, I thought I would tune it up a bit and publish it here on the blog, along with the two accompanying essays.

I sent these three essays to Burlington, Vermont’s Brautigan Library, named for Richard Brautigan and initiated by his daughter Ianthe. The essays were among the first (in 1990) accepted, bound and placed on the shelves under the “Mayonnaise System Catalog Number” of: “Social/Political/Cultural: SOC 1990.007.” My accompanying certificate states: “LET NO MAN block the light of wisdom and inspiration found therein.”

Capitalism is to civilization what AIDS is to the human body. The injustice of injustices is that our fundamental human needs must be earned through labor and purchased with income. Human existence does not have to be subservient to the flow of money. When the needs of humanity are met unconditionally (without first having to earn the right for survival) then we, as a people, as a community, will be free to turn the creativity within our minds and hearts to higher concerns.

04 APRIL 1990, DENVER, COLORADO: “If we did not keep to socialism, but instead, as some people advocate, turned back to take the capitalist road, . . . degeneration . . . inherent in a society of exploiting classes, would spread unchecked.” Chinese Premier Li Peng spoke these words on March 20, 1990, to the Chinese legislature. Although blind to the greater oppression of socialism, Premier Peng, when observing capitalism, sees with notable clarity.

Capitalism invites a degeneration of human compassion and desire; it calls for an inhalation of profit, gain, goods, and services; and it demands a plunge to the lower depths of human potential. Within the system of capitalism, people make choices in life while contemplating the pitch-black abyss of unemployment, hunger and homelessness.

For a view of these lower depths, one has only to look to the cast of characters in the recent events in Eastern Europe: the American capitalists who are rushing in for opportunity; the Eastern Europeans who are embracing the West with wild intoxication (as documented by American journalists); and finally, the Eastern Europeans who are worrying with a sober fear of an uncertain future that approaches like an avalanche.

On November 9, 1989, East Germany conceded to the rupture of its population that had begun September 12, with the opening of the East German – Hungarian border. The Berlin Wall had opened for travel into the west.

As if a dam had burst open from the pressure, refugees, like tons of water, flooded through. With the Christmas season rapidly approaching, Hyman Products, Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri, responded to the event with salivating urgency. Fifty tons of the Berlin Wall were quickly dismantled and quietly shipped to Missouri, where the concrete slabs were reduced to chunks the size of golf balls. The mementos, symbolizing the western democratic freedom to be found beyond the wall (and moderately priced at $10.00 each), reached the shelves of stores such as Bloomingdales and May D&F in the nick of time for Christmas shoppers who had mistakenly thought they had everything.

Arriving in West Berlin nine days after the wall was opened, the aging acoustic-rock trio Crosby, Stills & Nash performed a twenty-minute set of music to an enthusiastic audience with the Brandenburg Gate portion of the Berlin Wall as a backdrop. A CBS Evening News film clip captured the trio singing “Chippin’ Away,” a fortuitously appropriate song from one of their recent albums. Their record company, Atlantic Records, no doubt, insured that music stores throughout West Berlin had an adequate supply of the Crosby, Stills & Nash vinyl.

WEST BERLIN — Crosby, Stills and Nash, whose rock music roots reach back to the early years of the Berlin Wall, sang to several hundred chilly fans today in front of the Brandenburg Gate, telling them to keep chipping away at the wall.

*******************************************************************

Stephen Stills said the 20-minute performance with sidekicks David Crosby and Graham Nash was arranged on short notice, with help from the West Berlin police.

There might have been no hint of an intent to market except for the telltale evening news clip. How could the performance have truly been spontaneous and heartfelt when it was a mere twenty minutes in length, but long enough for CBS to grab a film clip of the song, “Chippin’ Away?” Compassion and marketing walk hand-in-hand along the capitalist road.

On December 29, Vaclav Havel was elected President of Czechoslovakia after its population had also ruptured the borders of its communist regime. Frank Zappa, American rock guitarist and self-avowed capitalist, wasted no time announcing that he was planning to interview Havel in a film documentary for FNN (Financial News Network on cable television). The documentary would cover Havel’s rise from the oppression of socialism to his role in Czechoslovakia’s current alignment with the economy of the West.

Jane Fonda, the movie actress, had a similar light bulb flash in her mind, according to a March 21, 1990, Denver Post column by Liz Smith:

“People are talking about Jane Fonda’s recent trip to Europe. She’s been moving fast since the tumultuous events over there and plans a big movie which would co-star – the fall of the iron curtain! Fonda recently spent time with Czechoslovakia’s new president, playwright Vaclav Havel, and sees his life story – especially the five years he spent in jail for dissident activities against communism – as a heady brew for film. Fonda herself would portray Havel’s wife, Olga.”

It’s debatable that Fonda’s desire would go any further than the boundaries of her heart without the profit motive of the film company that dictates her vocation. Honest compassion, present though it may be, is hard to find in the news stories emanating from these recent events. Honest compassion is associated with the poor and the lower class – those who are the polar opposites of capitalists. An example would be Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who does not accept money for the continuation of her work. She accepts only unconditional offerings of food, medical supplies, and service. Compassion that turns a profit, however, makes the news and adds definition to life at the lower depths.

Captured by American journalists, the eyes and voices of the refugees flooding through the borders express a consuming desire for the goods and services of the West. A CBS reporter for the Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt program on November 12, 1989 commented that refugees pouring into West Berlin would mostly stop in front of toy stores with “crazy-big smiles” while looking at stuff for their children.

One television image focused on a large sign held by children in a crowd near the Brandenburg Gate, at the entrance to West Berlin, which proclaimed Krenzman, “Batman.” One journalist wrote in a November 12 front-page Denver Post article that a large Woolworth’s outlet in the heart of West Berlin was literally under siege by thousands of East German consumers “buying food, cassettes, clothes, anything affordable and in short supply in the east.”

According to an article from the same paper, East Germans “waded past dazzling showcases of oysters, caviar, lobsters, champagne, and oranges on their first visit to the West. So it went in thousands of West Berlin department stores and bars, bookstores and movie theatres, hamburger joints and even pornography shops.”

The article continues, “outside the Wertheimer department store, a crowd gathered around a glass case to ogle an elaborate toy train display that seemed as marvelous to them as the Mercedes sedans clogging the nearby side street.” According to a March 18, 1990 Denver Post article, there are now open-air markets in Weimar, East Germany with signs over much-coveted blue jeans and bananas that read “deutsche marks only.”

This intoxication with Western goods and services affected the results of the March 19 free elections in East Germany, after which one East German man (interviewed on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather) concluded “East Germany is finished. Fifty percent of the people voted for money, not for their own country.” A professor from Humboldt University in East Berlin concluded “My fellow countrymen have betrayed me and my nation for the promise of riches. They voted for bananas, chocolate, and a better life.” In nearby Czechoslovakia, when the borders were opened to the west, one Prague teenager (interviewed on the CBS Evening News) said “I think for young people it makes no sense, because we won’t have the money to go [to the West] anyway.” This degenerative focusing of human desire upon the acquisition of products characterizes life at the lower depths of capitalism.

The elderly and the soon-to-be unemployed of East Germany are fearful of the insecurity that capitalism will bring. Under socialism, the East Germans have “cradle-to-grave” social benefits that provide secure employment, as well as subsidized food and housing.

On December 31, 1989, a journalist for CBS Sunday Morning reported “Most East Germans want the benefits of a free economy, but are afraid of losing the benefits of socialism.” An East German lady (being interviewed) agreed, “Not only a free economy, but on the other side the social things should not be lost: the right for work; everyone has a house; nobody is so poor they have to be hungry.” A March 13, 1990 Denver Post article reported:

“Economic reforms will leave 100,000 auto workers without jobs, an industry official said yesterday in the most concrete sign that East Germany’s radical changes could mean widespread unemployment. Dieter Voigt, the general manager of East Germany’s IFA Automobile works, said layoffs of between sixty percent to seventy percent were expected in the automobile industry and related production facilities.”

On the March 19, NBC Evening News with Tom Brokaw, Gerhard Petri (interviewed in East Germany) said “I am scared that my apartment will cost four or five times more, and my pension will not be raised. I am 78 years old and I don’t see a rosy future.”

According to a December 14 Rocky Mountain News article by Peter Tautfest (an American writer and editor who has lived in West Germany for the last twenty years), West Berlin residents, prior to the building of the Berlin Wall, would exchange their strong mark on the free market for the weak East German mark and cross over to East Berlin to buy such heavily subsidized food items as bread, milk, potatoes and meat at a fraction of the price they had to pay in Western supermarkets. “Today,” he writes, “many fear the same prospect could draw West Berlin’s growing population of homeless, unemployed and social dropouts to buy cheap basics in East Berlin.” He adds:

“An even greater worry is that a poor and weak East Germany could wind up as an economic colony of its rich and powerful Western cousin. Some wealthy West Germans are already speculating in real estate in East Germany, . . . As go basic food items and real estate, so would go industrial assets. . . . In no time flat, large parts of East Germany could be bought up by West German investors.”

Fear and insecurity, already being felt by East Germans, are at the heart of the lower depths of capitalism.

Soon, capitalism will be the only economic system of significant strength. Then, all other systems will be slight in comparison. Eyes will turn away from the tangible oppression of the socialist regimes that created symbols of division such as the Berlin Wall and rulers such as Nicolai Ceaucescu. As the refugees flood to the capitalist west and socialist regimes crumble into obscurity, eyes will turn to the oppression of capitalism that degenerates the compassion and desire of humanity into a narrowed focus upon earnings, acquisitions, and basic hand-to-mouth survival. It is an oppression that cannot be shattered into pieces with a sledgehammer, like the Berlin Wall, or assassinated with a firing squad, like Ceaucescu, yet it seeks to divide, control, and submerge life with the same authority.

I originally wrote this April 4, 1990, five months after the Berlin Wall fell. After twenty-three years, I thought I would tune it up a bit and publish it here on the blog, along with the two accompanying essays.

I sent these three essays to Burlington, Vermont’s Brautigan Library, named for Richard Brautigan and initiated by his daughter, Ianthe. The essays were among the first (in 1990) accepted, bound and placed on the shelves under the “Mayonnaise System Catalog Number” of: “Social/Political/Cultural: SOC 1990.007.” My accompanying certificate states: “LET NO MAN block the light of wisdom and inspiration found therein.”

Here are two recent articles specifically on the subject stated in the title. Basically, the belief is that Pope Francis is neither socialist nor capitalist. The articles clarify this seemingly incongruent statement.

Acton Institute

It was inevitable. With the election of a new man to the Chair of Peter, we’ve already seen an effort to portray him as “socially conservative” yet “economically progressive.” This seems to be the way virtually every pope has been presented since Leo XIII’s long reign. And it’s a profound illustration of the limits of applying secular political categories to something like the Catholic Church.

No one in their right mind would describe Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., as an ecclesiastical Milton Friedman or a closet free marketer. Plainly, he’s not. But Francis does have two particular concerns with regard to economic issues. One is the naked materialism and consumerism that disfigures so many peoples’ lives. No Catholic is going to affirm people seeking their salvation in the endless acquisition of stuff. Francis’s asceticism is a clear repudiation of that mindset.

Francis’s second concern regarding economic issues is the materially poor. Again, that’s precisely what you would expect from any orthodox Catholic. As Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia (who’s no social liberal) once memorably wrote: “Jesus tells us very clearly that if we don’t help the poor, we’re going to go to hell. Period.”

Over the centuries, however, Catholics have actually disagreed among themselves about how best to help the needy. Indeed, the Church teaches that (1) these issues fall largely into the area of what it calls prudential judgment and (2) it is primarily the responsibility of lay Catholics. No Catholic can be a Communist. Nor can they be an anarcho-capitalist. But there is a lot of room between these extremes.

And how Catholics cash out that “in-between” is heavily influenced by the circumstances in which they find themselves. And in Pope Francis’s case, it’s the conditions of the economic basket-case otherwise known as modern Argentina.

Argentina is a once-prosperous nation that experienced a rapid spiral into seemingly perpetual economic dysfunction throughout the 20th century. Over and over again, Argentina has been brought to its knees by the populist politics of Peronism, which dominates Argentina’s Right and Left. “Kirchnerism,” as peddled by Argentina’s present and immediate past president, is simply the latest version of that.

In concrete terms, this pathology translates into big government, high taxes, hostility to business and foreign investment, heavy debt, and a level of corruption that defies imagination. That adds up to a strange mixture of unsophisticated Keynesianism and naked crony capitalism. And it doesn’t benefit the poor. It benefits the powerful and well-connected. In Argentina, you don’t get ahead through being economically entrepreneurial; you get ahead through political power and as many privileges from the state as you can.

This is the disaster that Pope Francis’s limited commentary on economic matters has sought to address since he became Argentina’s leading churchman in 1998. And Francis has made it abundantly clear that liberation theology is not the solution. One of the reasons he’s not so popular with some of his fellow Jesuits is that he stopped the Jesuits in Argentina from going down that path in the 1970s and 80s. Liberation theology’s Marxist components, he knew, were plainly incompatible with Catholicism. Father Bergoglio also foresaw that it would turn much of the Church into nothing more than just another utopian-revolutionary movement, as occurred in other parts of Latin America.

My suspicion is that Pope Francis is not going to invest enormous intellectual energy in proposing various schemes for economic reform. He will certainly continue to champion the interests of the poor against those who want to maintain the corrupt status quo prevailing throughout many developing nations. There is such a thing as economic justice and the Catholic Church has a definite view of what that looks like. But inferring that the new pope is going to bring Occupy Wall Street to the Vatican takes more than a stretch of the imagination. In fact, it’s a form of Kirchneristic wishful thinking that simply doesn’t do justice to the wisdom and sanctity of the man.

2.)Pope Francis Blasts ‘Cult of Money’ That Harms the Poor: ‘Money Has to Serve, Not to Rule!’

During a speech Thursday, Pope Francis blasted the “cult of money” that he says is tyrannizing the poor and turning humans into expendable consumer goods. These comments were particularly important, because they marked the first time the pontiff has spoken out about the subject (as pope, that is).

It’s no secret that Pope Francis is frugal. Stories about his penchant for a simple life are now widely-known since he rose to the top of the Catholic Church. While many of the questions surrounding the faith leader’s views on poverty and finances have dissipated, his denunciation on Thursday of the global financial system is capturing quite a bit of attention.

—Pope Francis, Juan Martin del Potro. In this photo provided Thursday, May 16, 2013 by the Vatican newspaper l’Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis is greeted by Argentine tennis player Juan Martin del Potro, who gave him his tennis racket, at the end of the pontiff’s general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 15, 2013. (AP Photo/L’Osservatore Romano, ho)

In addition to decrying the overall obsession with money, Francis demanded Thursday that financial and political leaders reform the global financial system to make it more ethical and concerned for the common good. He said: “Money has to serve, not to rule!”

It’s a message Francis delivered on many occasions when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, and it’s one that was frequently stressed by retired Pope Benedict XVI. Francis, who has made clear the poor are his priority, made the comments as he greeted his first group of new ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.

Pope Francis kisses a child from the Popemobile at the end of a canonisation mass in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican on May 12, 2013. The Pope led a mass on Sunday for candidates to sainthood Antonio Primaldo, Mother Laura Montoya and Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala. AFP PHOTO / FILIPPO MONTEFORTE (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images)

Previously, TheBlaze explored Francis’ views on the poor in detail, tackling a question some critics have posed and feared: Is Pope Francis (formerly known as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio) a socialist who will allow liberation theology to infiltrate the Catholic Church?

As we noted back in March, while it is true that poverty is close to Francis’ heart, there’s no indication that he’s a socialist and it’s on record that he combated liberation theology as a result of its Marxist roots.

It will be interesting to see how Francis will continue to speak about the issue of poverty in the coming months and years.

Here are four brief articles developing a necessary, out-of-the-ordinary (would I offer you anything less? :)) context to contemplate while you’re out and about enjoying the freshness of nature today, the beginning of spring 2012.

wild lilies - spring 2010 --SB

First, from the online Guitar World Magazine, news that the famed guitarist for Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page, is today marketing six never-officially-released tracks, ominously titled: Lucifer Rising and other sound tracks.” Page created the recordings for Kenneth Anger’s 1972 film, Lucifer Rising, co-starring (uncredited) another acclaimed British musician Marianne Faithfull, once the lovely girlfriend of a much younger (but not so faithful) Mick Jagger.

Jagger and Faithfull in more halcyon days --Lauren Valenti theVogueVibes.com

Second, the British Guardian published a world map graphically clarifying the multitude of individual locations of the ever-spreading Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests around our globe. Their map is from four months ago during the first wave of OWS protests, but as you’ll see from the third article, today hearkens the beginning of a second wave of more earnest pandemonium from the movement, aimed at coinciding with the American presidential election, now in full swing, as well as with the rapidly decaying world economy.

On a side note, check out the legendary British author J. G. Ballard’s posthumous final novel (published 2003 in England, 2011 in America), Millenium People, for a great fictional (or not) account of street fighting, which Mick Jagger so passionately anthemized in a Rolling Stones song. Here, Ballard describes a more modern, and chilling, class-warfare in English streets, which in fact has since begun its global contagion, predominantly from the OWS germ.

Third, a selection from TheBlaze.com detailing Frances Fox Piven’s comments of her speech from eleven days ago (with links to primary-source audio) and forewarning, on behalf of the OWS, “This Spring, We’ll See Action.”

As a corollary to the Frances Fox Piven article, the very left-of-center, but also very important publication for understanding the far left, The Nation, has their entire April 2, 2012 issue devoted to the “call-to-arms” of “Occupy Spring.” The issue contains the thoughts of fourteen influential progressive activists, including Frances Fox Piven and Michael Moore, on the forward strategy that the OWS movement should take beginning today, this first day of spring.

My own thought process operates, I imagine, as far from those of the above progressive icons as could be possible. I have no problem, however, referencing this virtual home-school graduate class on the history of modern progressive thought and how it’s being thrust upon our world today. I thoroughly believe that we should all understand our enemies, from their own words, in order to live with them side-by-side — and not wish them dead. Free speech, after all, is free to all or free to none.

OWS protester in San Diego, CA - TheBlaze.com

Finally, to balance the political spectrum, a brief article from the Kansas City Star reporting on GOP caucus elections held in Missouri three days ago. The elections spun more-than-slightly out of control, revealing the simmering rage from Ron Paul’s supporters over how the center-right GOP (primarily party-supporters of Romney and Santorum) are pulling every devilish trick they can (in this case through ballot-counting mayhem) to marginalize Paul’s clear and present power among the liberty-conscious right as well as among the younger Democrats, all of whom have had it with President Obama and his administration.

If none of the GOP candidates reach the required delegates to be nominated (becoming more-and-more likely as each state ballot-count passes), then all hell will break lose at the ensuing Republican brokered convention in which all bets are off for the nomination.

Anger is brewing from the grassroots to the pinnacles of power, from the far left to the far right and most points in-between, in America and worldwide, and it all ramps up today.

Jimmy Page has just announced the release of Lucifer Rising and Other Sound Tracks for March 20, a date specifically chosen for its connection to the spring equinox.

This marks the first time ever that these tracks have been officially released. (Songs were apparently released in 1987, although the legality of that release is very much in question.)

“The title music, along with other musical pieces recorded at my home studio in the early Seventies, have been revisited, remixed and released for the first time,” Page said. “This is a musical diary of avant-garde compositions and experiments, one of which was to appear on the film Lucifer Rising [ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066019/ ]. The collection has been exhumed and is now ready for public release.”

The album will be available a standard edition on heavyweight vinyl, as well as deluxe and signed deluxe editions.

You can get more information, as well as register for the deluxe pre-orders, at jimmypage.com.

Page was commissioned to write a soundtrack for Kenneth Anger’s 1972 film Lucifer Rising, which went unused in the final version of the film. Page makes a cameo in the movie, staring at a portrait of Aleister Crowley while holding an Egyptian stele.

Occupy protests around the world: full list visualised

The Occupy protests have spread from Wall Street to London to Bogota. See the full list – and help us add more.

“951 cities in 82 countries” has become the standard definition of the scale of the Occupy protests around the world this weekend, following on from the Occupy Wall Street and Madrid demonstrations that have shaped public debate in the past month. . . .

This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 06.45 EST on Monday 14 November 2011. It was last modified at 10.03 EST on Monday 14 November 2011. It was first published at 14.06 EDT on Monday 17 October 2011.

[ Please note that all bold highlighting is original to the following article.] –SB

According to Frances Fox Piven:

The Occupy Wall Street movement is entering the phase where it “makes trouble.”

“We’ll see action against the banks, against the corporations.”

Different forms of protests that will engage many people.

Occupy was helped by “sympathetic” press coverage.

Leftist professor and activist Frances Fox Piven last week predicted the Occupy Wall Street movement is entering the phase where it “makes trouble” and will soon be taking action against banks and other institutions.

“It may well be that the Occupy movement is now in its second phase, in the phase where it makes trouble, in the phase where it threatens to shut down institutions,” Piven said. “The Occupy movement has moved into the neighborhoods of our cities, it has moved into the schools…. This spring, we’ll see action against the banks, against the corporations.”

She added, “It is going to be a spring with lots of protests that take different forms and engage lots of people.”

Piven made her comments during a lecture to a group of students at the University of Connecticut last Friday. She touched on the genesis of the Occupy movement, which she said was particularly a result of the financial crisis, which “exposed those in charge of the economy as illegitimate.”

“The people who were sitting on top of the world, the top-tenth of the top 1 percent, were guilty. They were guilty of thievery, of chicanery,” Piven said.

* “Francis Fox Piven”: For this primary source audio clip of her comments, please see link to full article, provided above. –SB

* Calling Occupy Wall Street “a brilliant tactical innovation,” Piven dismissed the notion that local authorities actually worried about the sanitary conditions of the encampments, saying their major concern was how easily the “99 percent” theme caught on — helped by sympathetic press coverage.

Fiery and Fearful --Linas Garsys Washington Times

“The press began to cover them, and as the press began to cover them, the press became more sympathetic. The slogan, ‘we are the 99 percent, they are the 1 percent,’ is so clear, how can you say they have no demands?” she said. “Then the polls started to show that the message was resonating with a lot of Americans. And as that happened, the local authorities became worried. All of a sudden, it was very dangerous to have people sleeping overnight.”

* “Piven OWS Structure”: For this primary source audio clip of her comments, please see link to full article, provided above. –SB

* Taking questions from students, Piven was asked how lawmakers can pass laws for “the 99 percent” without being viewed as socialist.

“Well, we’ll call them democratic, or maybe we’ll call them anarchists,” Piven replied before adding to audience laughter: “No, you can’t call a law an anarchist law.”

She continued, “I know one poll that shows something like half of the youngest age group polled, probably 15 to 25, saw no problems with socialism. I myself am not a socialist, but, you know, who knows what that is? I want to try to reform American capitalism to the extent that it can be reformed, and then we’ll see.”

* “Piven Socialism”: For this primary source audio clip of her comments, please see link to full article, provided above. –SB

“The Tea Party has a chant at its rallies. The chant is ‘Take it back! Take it back! Take it back!’ And you know who they want to take it back from? They want to take it back from African Americans, immigrants. They can’t stand the idea, they’ve popularized the idea that our African American president is a Muslim,” she said.

* “Piven Tea Party”: For this primary source audio clip of her comments, please see link to full article, provided above. –SB

* Piven also espoused her views on the charter school versus public school debate, saying in charter schools, “poorer children…don’t get the same kind of educational services.”

“If we take the funds that are designated to public education and we give them to for-profit entrepreneurs they’re going to behave in an entrepreneurial way,” she said, meaning teachers will “select out the kids who will do best.”

* “Piven Public Schools”: For this primary source audio clip of her comments, please see link to full article, provided above. –SB

* Asked about the “hostile” business environment in the U.S., another student questioned what is stopping businesses from picking up and relocating due to over-regulation.

“You know, these businesses need government, they rely on government,” Piven replied. “There may come a time when this new super structure of international agencies like the IMF, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the European Union is so highly developed they can actually function to provide the safeguards, the credibility, the infrastructure, the legal framework that business requires. They haven’t yet so I would say let’s tame business, fence them in, while it can be tamed.”

* “Piven Tame Business”: For this primary source audio clip of her comments, please see link to full article, provided above. –SB

* Piven gave her talk as part of a University of Connecticut political science forum. Joseph Gasser, president of the University of Connecticut College Republicans, told The Blaze that while Piven has “every right to voice her collectivist opinions,“ he believes it was ”a mistake“ to give a platform to someone with ”a demonstrable misunderstanding of economics and a vicious contempt for those who have made themselves successful.

Student members from both the College Republicans and the University of Connecticut Young Americans for Liberty attended the event.

“Hosting her sends the message to students, faculty and donors to the university that this is an environment where covetousness, envy and ill will are encouraged at the expense of industriousness, hard work and ingenuity,” Gasser said.

Liberty, Mo.: Missouri Republicans met in more than 100 counties Saturday to begin picking their presidential nominee at party caucuses marked in some places by crowded rooms, loud disagreements — and no clear victor.

Organizers shut down one of the largest GOP caucuses, in St. Charles County, because of bitter disputes between supporters of Rep. Ron Paul and attendees supporting other presidential hopefuls. Confusion and contention also marred several other crowded Republican gatherings, The Associated Press reported.

In Clay County, arguments between Paul supporters and others became so intense that the caucus chairman threatened to have voters removed by force.

Backers of the Texas congressman said they were upset their views weren’t being heard.

“We’re just a little frustrated because caucuses are supposed to be run by a very strict set of rules,” said Paul supporter John Findlay. “We raised a number of points of order, points of information, points of parliamentary inquiry, many of which have been ignored.”

But county caucus chairman Ben Wierzbicki said all caucus goers had been treated fairly.

“Certain people have made it very difficult on most of the people who are involved in this caucus,” he said. “It might be a little crazy, but that’s part of it.”

After a three-hour-plus session, Clay County caucus goers eventually elected delegate slates from both the 5th and 6th congressional districts whose members were officially uncommitted to any specific presidential candidate. Attendees also firmly rejected an effort to more closely align the party platform with Paul’s views.

Unlike neighboring Kansas, which caucused March 10, Missouri Republicans did not cast direct ballots for any presidential candidate Saturday. Instead, delegates picked Saturday will eventually choose 49 of the state’s 52 national GOP convention delegates at district conventions in April and the state convention in June.

Not every county held a caucus Saturday. Republicans in Jackson County and the city of St. Louis postponed their caucuses until March 24 because of St. Patrick’s Day events.

Because of the confusing process, no presidential candidate is expected to get an immediate political boost from Saturday’s caucuses.